Multicultural Resources on the Internet: The United States and Canada

Citation

Chao, S.J. (2000), "Multicultural Resources on the Internet: The United States and Canada", Collection Building, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 78-80. https://doi.org/10.1108/cb.2000.19.2.78.1

This book was written and compiled by faculty and students in the Graduate Library and Information Science Program at the University of South Florida in Tampa. It is divided into 14 chapters according to the various ethnic groups considered, with Chapter 1 offering an overview on the nature of Internet resources, the time‐sensitivity issue of Web sites and the criteria for selection of multicultural Internet resources for this volume.

The following topics are covered in Chapters 2 to 14: general information; business; culture and humanities; education; fine arts; government, law and politics; history, language arts and literature; popular culture; religion; science and technology; women’s issues; and other sites that do not fall easily into these topics. Chapter 2 starts with comprehensive Internet sites that deal with multiple ethnic groups and cultures, and Chapter 3 details sites of the various indigenous peoples of North America, including Native Americans and a number of Arctic peoples, most of them are known as Eskimos or Inuit.

In Chapter 4 a comprehensive listing of African‐American resources is covered. Of particular interest is the section on education, which covers extensively the sites for museums and libraries with major African‐American collections and sites for over 100 historically Black universities and colleges. Chapter 5 covers a selection of Hispanic‐American Internet resources. The Asian‐American resources are covered in Chapters 6 to 9, with Chapter 6 reviewing Asian‐American sites in general, Chapter 7 containing Chinese‐American resources, Chapter 8 covering Japanese‐American resources, and Chapter 9 dealing with Asian Indian‐American resources. In Chapter 10, Jewish‐American resources are listed, with many sources on the Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jewish heritages. Resources on Americans of Middle Eastern and North African descent are covered in Chapter 11. Chapters 12 to 14 contain Internet sites for French Canadians, Cajun and Creole, and Hawaiian Americans, respectively.

Due to inherent differences in the various groups and the variety of ethnic populations and cultures considered, this volume does not cover all ethnic groups represented in the USA and Canada. Other cultures such as Koreans, Vietnamese and Cambodian will be included in later editions. Since chapters are written and compiled collaboratively by different authors, the style, subject emphasis and selection methods vary from one chapter to another. As the consequences, readers may find certain chapters contain more and higher‐quality resources than others. For example, many of the best Asian‐American resources are missing in Chapter 6. All of the three selected sites under women’s issues cover simply South Asian women without mentioning East Asian women at all. There are many good sites on the subjects of Asian government/law/politics and religion, while the authors of this chapter have included only one single site under both topics. The Chinese‐American Resources in Chapter 7 contain an unbalanced collection of sites originated predominantly from China with limited resources from and about Taiwan and Hong Kong. With very few sites selected on each topic, priority should be given to government sites rather than personal home pages, but the latter appeared in several places in the chapter.

In view of the vast amount of information on the Web, it is not an easy task to make selections and satisfy everyone’s needs. Despite these drawbacks, this book could be used as a general guide for teachers and students at the high school and junior college levels, as well as librarians and general readers to locate multidisciplinary and cultural related resources.